In this election year President Obama appears to be treading a narrow path between greater harnessing of renewable energy sources and the pressure for cheap fossil fuels. In a University of Miami speech on February 23 President Obama laid out his Administration’s energy policies (see the Sierra Club response below). The previous day EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told energy industry leaders and environmentalists that ‘natural gas fracking can be done without harmful impact’, although it is the EPA that is now involved in the Dimock water supply and in a variety of actions including comprehensive studies of the possible air and water contamination from shale gas drilling.

In response to the President’s Miami speech, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune stated in part of a Feb. 23 press release:

“We urge the President to deliver our cleanest, quickest and cheapest options first, and resist falling back on more expensive and dangerous new nuclear power and fracked natural gas. As it stands, the Sierra Club has no confidence in the secretive and toxic practices of natural gas fracking, nor do we think that new nuclear has any role to play in America’s clean energy future. The more we leverage cheap energy efficiency, the fewer new power plants and fracking wells we will need.”